Obama: Know where it’s really great to do business?

Well, as long as you forget about the oppressive Communist government and the lack of freedom and the Internet filtering and the re-education camps … China sounds really groovy:

Everybody’s watching what’s going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option.”

Does Barack Obama understand the nature of the Beijing regime? The reason that the government can afford all of this spending is that they control the means of production and the wealth of the nation. They can confiscate what they want at will and spend it where they like. And in Beijing, they spent it where the cameras would be pointed.

Unfortunately, most of what the cameras see is just a facade, as Dale Franks points out at Q&O:

The Chinese infrastructure that so enthralls Obama remains decades behind that of the US. What infrastructure China manages to build, however, gets its energy from oil and coal, not from wind and solar. China has become the highest emissions nation in the world and shows no sign of slowing itself down over concerns about anthropogenic climate change. In fact, the air in Beijing is so bad that outdoor Olympics events almost had to be moved.

Meanwhile, the regime where Obama thinks the world would love to do business maintains itself through brutal oppression. China blocked access to the Internet for international journalists despite promising to allow full access to reporters for the Games. They arrested reporters covering peaceful protests. And these are the actions they took while trying to make themselves look good.

If Obama wants us to build up American infrastructure, he can start by ending the flow of American wealth overseas for energy. Create hundreds of thousands of jobs by building the American energy infrastructure through drilling in the OCS, ANWR, and interior shale formations. Lower capital-gains tax rates to encourage more investment and generate more revenues (and jobs).

America needs a President who can see past the facades. Obama has given every indication of gullibility, first with his pledge to conduct presidential-level diplomacy without preconditions with regimes like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, and now in declaring China the place to do business. Obama isn’t at all ready to lead this nation; he’s not even ready to run a business, with thinking like this.

Update: iTunes doesn’t think China’s such a great place to do business today:

Customers in China of Apple Inc.’s iTunes online music store were unable to download songs this week, and an activist group said Beijing was trying to block access to a new Tibet-themed album.

In Internet forums, iTunes users complained they had been unable to download music since Monday. That was a day after the Art of Peace Foundation announced the release of “Songs for Tibet,” with music by Sting, Alanis Morissette, Garbage and others, and a 15-minute talk by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

Michael Wohl, executive director of the New York City-based group, said he believed the album was the reason for the iTunes interruption, though he had no proof.

“We issued a release saying that over 40 (Olympic) athletes downloaded the album in an act of solidarity, and that’s what triggered it. Then everything got blocked,” Wohl said by phone.